If you’ve ever traveled anywhere for an extended period of time, you no doubt know that during your travels, you often experience little realizations and epiphanies here and there. For Humans of Ptownlife, I interviewed a Pleasanton local who had spent a year living abroad in the Netherlands and learned about how living abroad can change your attitude about many things.

Be ready to change your…1. Attitude about life
“It changed our attitude about how we wanted to live our life. For example, I still ride my bike every single day. I drive my car as little as possible. I prefer the lifestyle where I am willing to take a break every now and then; I don’t have to go 100 miles an hour all the time, and that’s what my personality is, so that’s a good lesson for me to learn.”

2. Traveling plans
“It also kind of gives you the travel bug and it stays with you and I have another goal which will happen probably after I retire of doing a similar thing but maybe not staying a year, but staying long enough in one place. When you go to Europe, it doesn’t have to be Europe, anywhere, you tend to want to see as much of it as you can, so you’ll only stay two or three days at one place and then you’ll go for two or three days somewhere else, and yes, you get to see the historical components, but you don’t get a feel for the culture. So now I have a different attitude that if I go somewhere I want to stay three weeks in the same place, or a month, and I want to go to the same place every day for lunch four days a week and just start to learn about the culture, and the people, and their interests.”

I hope these four articles have inspired you to think about living or traveling abroad!